Peanuts vs. Cats

[steepholm]

"S. adored her old teacher," my friend told me of her 8-year-old daughter over lunch, "because she was a gymnastics coach, and S. loves gymnastics, so they got on really well. But she doesn't like her new teacher. She's into cats, and S. is cross because she has a cat allergy."

She found this attitude (amusingly) unreasonable in her daughter, and at first I was inclined to agree. But then I thought, what if she had a peanut allergy and her new teacher insisted on putting pictures of peanuts up round the classroom, dividing the classes into "Reese's" and "Sunpat", and generally singing the praises of peanuts in their manifold incarnations? That would seem more unreasonable on the teacher's part than the child's, wouldn't it? In fact, one might be tempted to contact the school for a Word.

What is the difference between the two cases? Is it just that I find cats cute myself, and peanuts not so much? Or more generally that cat lovers enjoy a recognised cultural niche, while peanut enthusiasts labour under the stigma of singularity? (But if so, shouldn't they be encouraged to express themselves, by way of showing the children that you don't have to be ashamed?) Or is it simply the contrast in seriousness between anaphylactic shock and a bit of a rash? (That said, I've known people whose social lives were seriously compromised by cat allergies.)

It may not be the most important debate of our times, but it's been bobbing around my brain ever since, so I put it here, under my ever-faithful "maunderings" tag.

Comments

[cmcmck]

Don't get me going on allergies. I suffer from an allergy to eggs. It's the second most common after nuts yet sources of prepackaged food, airline food and so forth are always full of it (often extremely badly labelled) where they wouldn't dream of putting nuts in everything.

[ironymaiden]

my husband is one of the folks who has to leave parties early due to breathing issues (even with drugs).
I've found a surprising number of cat people are themselves allergic and don't seem to care that they have to be heavily medicated to live in their own home; this makes it even harder to navigate socially.

[lamentables]

I have a phobia about puppets and find The Muppets absolutely terrifying. I assume anyone would think a Muppet-themed classroom reasonable, but I hope they’d also think it reasonable that my distress be taken seriously and the classroom redecorated. I’m not sure that adds anything to the maundering...

(I suspect that in real life I would get noises about the silliness of my phobia and exposure being the best way to get over it.)

[steepholm]

It's not a phobia I share, but neither does it seem ridiculous. A clown-themed classroom would probably give half the kids nightmares.

[conuly]

Has the teacher put up tons of pictures of cats and divided the class into groups based on cat breeds? Because if so, that's really weird.

[adrian_turtle]

It's not just that loving cats is more of a thing than loving peanuts--it's how easy it is for a person to show they love cats without actually having a cat in the room. There are statues of cats, and posters or mugs with pictures, or photographs of one's own cat. Eating peanuts is popular, but it doesn't have that kind of niche. People are always talking about cats being intrinsically comforting, when I've always found them deeply disgusting. I don't especially like it when people go on and on about how wonderful they are (even with vague fantasies of how the world would be better if every bookstore had one), but the conversation does not put me in any danger.